User:Editus Reloaded/Grave Danger

"Grave Danger"
CSI:Crime Scene Investigation episodes
Episode nos.	Season 5 Episodes 24 and 25
Directed by	Quentin Tarantino
Written by	Anthony E. Zuiker, Naren Shankar, Carol Mendelsohn and Quentin Tarantino
Original air dates	May 19, 2005
Guest appearances
John Saxon (Walter Gordon) Frank Gorshin (himself) Tony Curtis (himself) Lois Chiles (Jillian Stokes) Andrew Prine (Judge Bill "Cisco" Stokes)

Grave Danger is the name of the last two episodes in the fifth season of the popular American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada. This two parter was directed by Quentin Tarantino and was aired on May 19, 2005. The plot of the episodes closely resembles the predicament of The Bride in Tarantino's film Kill Bill.

This episode features two veteran actors Tony Curtis and Frank Gorshin; the latter died only two days before the episode aired. The episode was later dedicated to Gorshin's memory.

Plot

Summary

The separated graveyard-shift team join together after one of their own is kidnapped from a crime scene by a mysterious, vengeful assailant.

Part 1

{{spoiler}} The show opens with Nick Stokes driving down The Strip at night, listening to Bob Neuwirth's Lucky Too on the radio. He pulls over at a car park and a uniformed officer leads him to the "body" - a set of intestines coiled in an alley. When the officer walks off to be sick, Nick wanders down the alley and spots a styrofoam coffee cup, already in an evidence bag. As he crouches down to photograph it, he is snatched from behind and a cloth is clamped over his face.

20 minutes later, police officers and CSIs swarm the scene. Ecklie arrives and assures Grissom and Catherine that "the crime lab only has one case tonight". As they search the scene, they find Nuck's stab vest, camera and kit lying on the ground. They see the bagged coffee cup and realise that Nick didn't bag it.

The scene cuts to earlier that night: Grissom and Sara are reviewing a past homicide case, Greg and Hodges are playing a Dukes of Hazzard board game and Nick and Warrick toss a coin to choose assignments: an assault at a strip club or a "trash run" at the cross of Flamingo and Koval. Nick loses and Warrick leaves, gloating.

Back to the present, police scent dogs track the smell of Nick's vest to an empty parking space on a side street. Warrick notices a void in the fallen rain and takes measurements. With the help of the lab technicians and a dispatch officer, he determines the getaway vehicle to be a Ford Explorer and tracks its escape route on the traffic camera video tapes. A cutscene shows the kidnapper (as yet unidentified) placing an unconscious Nick in a Plexiglas coffin, throwing in his loaded service pistol, a set of glow sticks - one already lit - and a dictaphone. The coffin lid closes and earth is shovelled on top of it.

Part 2

After the prime suspect blows himself up, Grissom and the team must continue to find Nick using the evidence they've managed to put together. As time runs out for Nick, the chase becomes frantic and the team must use their knowledge and resources to help rescue Nick. In the coffin, Nick records goodbyes to his family and friends. At one point, he utters "Grissom", and the camera-angle changes to that of the lab's computer; Grissom is reading his lips and it's understandable when he says, "Sorry if I disappointed you", to which Gil replies, "You never did". {{endspoiler}}

Comparison

To other Tarantino works

{Image removed due to fair use policy}
As stated above, Nick's situation echoes that of The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, in the Tarantino film Kill Bill; both are buried alive in Plexiglas coffins. An exchange between Walter Gordon and Grissom also paraphrases a line from the movie:

• Gordon:You're telling me there's a million dollars in there? Along with some cute little booby traps? Which is it, a tracer, a dye pack?
  
• Grissom: Normally you'd be 100 per cent right, but this time you're 100 per cent wrong.

Visually, the episodes have been referred to as "Tarantino-esque...really attentive to detail" by Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick. His co-star Marg Helgenberger opined that "his [Tarantino's] filmmaking style lends itself really well to CSI...there's an enormous amount of close-ups, and it's a very visual show". Some elements of the episode, such as the pile of intestines that lures Nick to the alley, Walter Gordon's suicide and the black-and-white autopsy scene which Nick imagines when he is trapped in the coffin have also been likened to the viscera of Kill Bill, and Nick's hallucination of Al Robbins and David Phillips conducting his autopsy have also been compared to Tarantino's greyscale cinematography in the same film. The use of nonlinear storytelling at the beginning of the episode (going forwards in time to the search for Nick, back to the early evening and so on) also mimics Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, which present various elements of the story in a random order over two films.
{Image removed due to fair use policy}
The use and bubblegum pop style of background music echoes that of Reservoir Dogs, also directed by and starring Quentin Tarantino; notable songs used here are Bob Neuwirth's Lucky Too, from his album Look Up, and Outside Chance by the The Turtles, on the audio tape that Walter Gordon sends to the crime lab; this latter song is also audibly similar in style to "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel which featured in the infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs. The Turtles' song's lyrics also underline Nick's situation and chances:

"You can try to please me
but it won't be easy
stone walls surround me
I'm surprised that you even found me
and you don't stand an outside chance
don't stand an outside chance
you don't stand an outside chance
but you can try ..."

To Crate 'n Burial

Crate 'n Burial is a season 1 episode of CSI which bears many resemblences in terms of plot, to Grave Danger. For example, the kidnapper buries his victim, a businessman's wife, underground in the Nevada desert and demands $3 million for her safe return, on a short deadline of 3 hours. However, the culprit in Crate 'n Burial is after the money, not revenge, and the victim was initially an accomplice in a staged kidnapping. One scene from Grave Danger in particular, of Nick hammering on the lid of the coffin and screaming after he hears the dictaphone message, echoes a scene from the earlier episode where the victim wakes up in a box, flicks on a lighter and seeing her predicament, starts to scream wildly.

See Also

• Daddy's Little Girl
• Crate 'n Burial - a Season 1 episode with a similar storyline
• List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes
• Minor characters in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

External Links

• Transcript from TwizTV

References

Category:CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes